High school basketball: Strong field in NorCal Tipoff Classic

Published 4:48 pm, Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Six of The Chronicle’s preseason top 20 basketball teams, including No. 2 St. Ignatius and No. 3 Bishop O’Dowd-Oakland, will participate in the 11th annual NorCal Tip Off Classic on Saturday at Newark Memorial.

St. Ignatius surprised many last season by going 23-7, but the Wildcats won’t catch many off guard in 2017-18. They return not only the talented backcourt of All-West Catholic Athletic League performers Darrion Trammell and Brandon Beckman, but just about everyone else as well.

The Wildcats open the showcase at 11 a.m. against No. 11 Las Lomas-Walnut Creek (22-7), which features impressive guards Robert Prince and Nathan Robinson.

Five games after the opener, O’Dowd, with recently signed Pac-12 guards Elijah Hardy (Washington) and Naseem Gaskin (Utah), takes on Los Angeles City Section power Fairfax, which boasts as many as five Division I players. Led by seniors Jamal Hartwell and Kirk Smith, Fairfax is No. 4 in the Cal-Hi Sports preseason state rankings and O’Dowd — which is short a couple of players still playing football — is No. 5.

Another potentially entertaining matchup is the day’s second game, in which Berkeley plays No. 6 Dublin, which features the stellar backcourt of Robby Beasley and Conner Jackson. Beasley was one of the top freshmen in Northern California last year and was second on the team in scoring.

Berkeley also features a dynamic backcourt, with Ben Baker and Kyree Brown, who is ranked the No. 30 senior in Northern California by NorCalpreps.com (Dublin’s Beasley is the No. 2 sophomore).

St. Joseph-Alameda finished No. 2 in last year’s Metro rankings, but lost its top two scorers, including first-team All-Metro guard Jade Smith. But the Pilots return a strong core led by guard Cameron Ba, and will get a boost from St. Mary’s-Berkeley transfer Julian Vaughns.

St. Joe’s, No. 10 in The Chronicle’s preseason rankings, will be tested immediately by Folsom, Cal-Hi Sports’ No. 9 team in the state. Folsom is led by 6-8 senior Mason Forbes, who will play at Harvard next season. St. Joseph and Folsom play at 5:30 p.m.

Other players to watch are San Joaquin Memorial wing Jalen Green, ranked the No. 2 sophomore in the country by 247Sports, his teammate Dameane Douglas (a Loyola Marymount signee) and Cal-bound Andre Kelly (Lincoln-Stockton).

MaxPreps senior writer Mitch Stephens covers high school sports for The San Francisco Chronicle.